Thursday, January 28, 2016

According to a video put out by Now This, after the snowstorm in Washington, D.C., only women showed up to run the business of the United States Senate. The 83 male senators did not show up, as well as male staff members.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the “Free to Believe” broadcast, organized by the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBT hate group, and Vision America, was delivered to more than 160 churches
in all 50 states. The broadcast, featured speeches from some of the most prominent anti-LGBT figureheads
in America, as well as taped remarks from almost the entire GOP
presidential field, including Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Carly
Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, and Rick Santorum.

Rick Santorum praised the Family Research Council, calling Tony Perkins, the FRC president, “our good friend.” Perkins purchased Klansman David
Duke’s mailing list for use in a Louisiana political campaign he was
managing. In 2010 he wrote on the FRC website, “While activists like to claim that
pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality,
evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a
homosexual problem.”

Rick Scarborough, head of Vision America, the other co-sponsor of the
broadcast, Scarborough has said that AIDS is God’s
judgment for an immoral act.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Looking at the 2014-15 college sports year, only five of the 17 women’s Division I team championships were won by
teams with female head coaches. Overall, 40.2 percent of head coaches in
women’s NCAA athletics last school year were women, and that number
falls to 38.9 percent at the Division I level.

The percentage of female head coaches in the sport has actually been
declining over the last five seasons, both overall and most severely at
the Division I level. In the 1996-97 school year — the first season in a
streak of three consecutive national championships for Pat Summitt and the
Tennessee Lady Vols — 62.3 percent of head coaches in women’s Division I
basketball were female. That number rose to 66 percent in 2009-10 but
has declined ever since. Last season 58.6 percent of Division I head coaches were female, and basketball has by far the highest percentage.

If that doesn't look like a problem, imagine if 74% of the coaches of the men's soccer teams were women, 63% of the men's tennis teams are coached by women, and 57% of the men's volleyball teams are coached by women. Does that seem fair or even realistic in our sexist society?

Friday, January 15, 2016

According to Esquire Magazine, 56 percent of Americans have indicated that they have less than $1,000 in their checking and savings accounts combined, as reported by Forbes. Almost a fourth of Americans (24.8 percent) have less than $100 to their name.
Meanwhile, 38 percent said they will not be paying off their full credit
card balance this month, and 11 percent said they would make the minimum
payment—meaning their debt only increases for years.

As people who support hierarchies continue to work hard to make them stronger, we see bigger discrepancies in wealth. Also, many people vote against their own interests when they are lured into voting that way because of another hierarchical issue, like equality for non-heterosexuals and the rights of women to control their bodies.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

A bipartisan poll released yesterday confirms that a majority of people who live in the west oppose giving federal land to private individuals or turning it over to states. Only in Utah, whose population is mostly Mormon, do people think they individually should control federal land.

"Charges of government overreach from the ideological fringes are making
headlines, but in reality most Westerners in this poll favor greater
protection and sensible use of the open lands and national treasures
that define the region," Eric Perramond, a professor who leads Colorado
College's State of the Rockies Project, said in a statement.

The Bundys place themselves above the law every one else has to obey, armed and occupying federal lands, believing the law doesn't apply to them. Now we see that they are assuming their opinions are shared by the entire population, which is characteristic of hierarchies, in that the top assumes they understand and represent everyone.

Friday, January 8, 2016

Nicholas Kristof: "Most gun owners use firearms responsibly, but with more guns there are more tragedies." "The Republican presidential candidates are on the wrong side of history here. While even Republican voters overwhelmingly say in polls that they favor sensible steps like universal background checks, the Republican candidates are politicizing what should be a public health issue, and they are scaring Americans into buying more guns, which magnifies the problem and causes more carnage.

Here are other quotes and statistics from the article:

The states with the most restrictive gun laws have the lowest gun death rates (including suicides). Take Massachusetts and New York, which have some of the tightest gun restrictions in America; they have three or four gun deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year. At the other extreme, two of the states with the
most permissive gun regulations are Alaska and Louisiana, and both have
gun death rates about five times as high: more than 19 per 100,000
inhabitants.

Republican presidential candidates should look at the natural experiment
that occurred when Missouri eased restrictions on buying handguns. The
result was a 25 percent rise in the firearm homicide rate, according to a study in the Journal of Urban Health.

In contrast, Connecticut tightened regulations on buying handguns, and
gun homicides there fell by 40 percent, according to the American
Journal of Public Health.

Dede Donahue has made it a habit of asking parents when arranging a play date, "Do you keep guns in your house?" Authorities say that parents don’t believe that their children know
where their guns are hidden, but a recent study says that eight in ten
first graders know where their parents hide their guns.

Ms. Donahue describes one friend, Melanie, who lived around the corner, who confessed that her husband kept a gun. Melanie walked into the bedroom to find her two-year-old son Jack with the gun in his lap he had retrieved from the bedside table. Later Jack found the gun in a box hidden in a closet.
According to this Washington Post article, nearly 1,500 children die from shootings each year.

Are your children safe in a home where parents or guardians don't keep their guns locked up and away from children?

In the gallery of the Texas legislature, bringing in concealed guns is perfectly acceptable. But for women who want to bring in tampons or pads, they are not allowed. Why? Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the senate president, reportedly didn’t
want the women to have any items that could be thrown from the gallery
at the lawmakers during their discussion of even more restrictions on abortion.

The gun lovers apparently think gun are not threat, but women's personal products can cause legislators much harm if hit in the head by a tampon.

Texas, you are really clueless. And blind to the obvious effects of excessive gun ownership in this country.

Monday, January 4, 2016

As far as coaches' salaries, resources, revenue, and media coverage, male-only college football is definitely on top of the college sports hierarchy in this country. With it come many perks and fortunes, and people who think that football defines the value of a college or university.

But being on top of the hierarchy means that people don't think about liabilities that may be present in such a sport that is based on violent play, and don't want to rock the boat to discuss problems. So many people are benefiting from the hierarchy of one sport being given so much preference.

Such is the case with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a traumatic brain disorder that can only be diagnosed during an autopsy. We have news of yet another male whose brain and body fail after being exposed to such a violent sport for many years. He died at age 25.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association was previously successful at keeping a ballot measure concerning Citizens United out of California saying that it would "clutter the ballot" and "could be used to shape voter turnout."

But today, the California Supreme Court cleared the way for the
Legislature to place an advisory measure on the November ballot asking
voters to express their views on campaign spending. The proposition asks voters whether there should be a federal
constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in
Citizens United vs. FEC, which permitted unlimited corporate and union
spending for federal candidates.

The conservatives know that high voter turnout favors people who want to break down hierarchies, not people like themselves who want to conserve hierarchies. Voter turnout could impact not only this advisory, but Presidential and Congressional races of course.